His World: The One and Only
by File 13
Summary: A series of Eddsworld one-shots that I will be working on whenever I feel like. Originally just a single one-shot, now to be a series. Doesn't follow any one specific AU or the original. Doesn't necessarily include my favorite things. They're just some thoughts. May include shippings, OCs, or similar. Just sit back and enjoy! It's pretty swell! (Originally "His World")
1. Story 1: His World

**"His World"**

The sun was too bright in his eye sockets, though he was never exactly sure how it could be. Not once in his life of over twenty years. He took a swig from his metal flask, wincing a little in confusion. The alcohol was oddly tasteless, which didn't make sense. Guinness was usually a pretty good beer to go with. He shrugged it off and screwed the lid back on.

Gasping and spluttering and screaming caught his attention. People were screaming his name, someone was pulling his sleeve, pulling him to a deep river beside where he was standing. His heart stopped. Green fabric. Brown hair. Panicked brown eyes. A pale face. All separated from his own plane of existence by a delicate layer, like a pane of glass. He plunged a hand into the water and grasped at the green fabric and pulled.

People were still screaming. Car alarms were screaming. He was screaming in his head as the body he was clutching went limp. Lay it on the white ground. Press his ear against the sopping chest, searching for a heartbeat. Water trickled sickeningly from the corner of pale lips. Up and down, up and down, push up and down, but nothing came out. Nothing. Nothing. Brown eyes closed slowly before flying back open. The body rolled onto its side and a torrent of watery red flooded from its mouth, pale red like diluted blood, before falling on its face.

He was shouting. The car alarms grew louder, shriller, and the voices grew to a deafening volume as he turned the soaking wet and heavy body over, pulling it into his arms, cold and wet and limp. Nothing. Tears filled unseeing blank eye sockets as he leaned over and buried his face in an empty, soundless, lifeless chest, the white light blinding him, the sounds melding into one high-pitched ringing, shaking, shrieking whine.

Tom shot straight up, screaming. White light faded to the soft blue black of reality. His breath was coming in shaking gasps and his hands were shaking as he brought them up to his face. It was wet with tears.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and his door was flung open. Green fabric. Brown hair. Panicked brown eyes. There was an unopened can of Coca Cola in Edd's right hand and he was wearing pajama bottoms. Matt in a half-finished mud mask appeared almost immediately after him, confusion written all over his handsome face. Tom swung his legs out from under the sheets of his bed and flung himself at Edd, who gave a cry of surprise as he had arms flung around his chest and a suddenly sobbing Tom clinging to him. Matt, confused by the scene, thought there was a hug party going on and wrapped his own arms around his two friends.

"Tom! What on earth is the matter with you?" Edd said, trying not to touch Tom.

"I thought you had died! Thank gosh, thank gosh…"

Edd's eyes softened a tiny bit and, after a moment's hesitation, laid an arm across his friend's back and said softly, "I'm not planning on going anywhere."

 **A/N This is not a ship. I wanted to contribute to the amazing Eddsworld fan base, though. If you haven't guessed, this is strongly based on the song "My Mom" by Kimya Dawson, and it's sort of a reflection of Tomska, I think. IDK, it just happened. Enjoy, comment, check out my other works. Peace out my dudes :)**


	2. Story 2: Goodbye to a World

*Chapter contains bloods, gore, and vivid descriptions. Reader discretion advised.*

" **Goodbye To A World"**

Five years. Five years, almost to this day, to this moment in time. The thought came to him as he stood in front of the tombs, his blue trench coat flapping feebly around his knees with the occasional small gust of wind.

The day was cold and dry. Cold and dry, like his heart had been on that day. He didn't have any idea what had overcome him at the time. But hindsight was 20/20. Perfect. Unflawed and unbiased, given enough time and ponderance. It was pain. And hatred. Confusion.

Oh the smell when he had left. Burnt hair, burnt clothing, burning flesh, hot blood. Their cries of agony as he betrayed them.

He shivered a little bit and pulled the trench coat tighter around his body, falling fully into the memory of that day.

His arm was rendered useless by the blast, amputated and replaced with a machine. His eye was fine, but half his body was now covered in a fine scar tissue from the blast - part of it burns, part of it shrapnel - and he had an appendage of steel and titanium that hung by his side and did his bidding, and yet still felt completely alien. It was a weapon as much as it was utilitarian, meant both to replace his lost limb and to make him stronger. And he hated it.

He fought it.

He struggled to become its master.

The doctor told him that he was completely in control of the mass of shining metal. He had no problems, there was no way for the mindless appendage to have any control over him. But that's not what he thought.

That's not what Tord felt. No, he felt as if the metal arm was battling with him for control. And he, Tord, needed to show it that he was the one in control. He was the master.

Paul had heard him screaming in his room for several nights in a row before reporting it to anyone. But before the doctors and the analyzers and the psychiatrists could do more than enter his room, he was gone. He had figured out a way to gain control. Ahh, the sweet release it would bring his fevered mind, so he thought.

The building was tall and made of red brick, almost blue in the darkness of night. The front doors were glass, two hedges with pretty little white and pink flowers standing on either side like sentries. Like his soldiers. They opened as he got closer. There was a scruffy and portly looking man in an oddly crisp security uniform, sleeping in a rolling chair and his feet on the small desk he sat behind. His soft snores followed the Red Leader as he walked into the elevator. Easy listening music crackled quietly over the speakers, the lights flickered gently. It was eerily calm, as was his mind.

The first door was dark and silent, the name plaque reflecting a soft gold in the ceiling lights. The second door was like the first, lifeless and quiet. But under the third was the harsh white flashing light of a television. The raucous voices from behind the door surely weren't allowed as they laughed at some easily forgotten punchline or pratfall. Tord hesitated before knocking, using his left hand rather than the fighting, provoking, enemy that was the right.

He flinched, not at the muffled sound of bone on wood, but at the voice that answered the knock. "It must be the pizza guy. Who's got the change? Come in!"

The last words were directed at Tord. Distantly, he felt like a fraud. But he was too focused on conquering the alien, wayward metal of his arm. He grasped the doorknob, feeling the cold metal so familiar and benign and different from his arm, and turned.

Their expressions... The look of mild puzzlement on the face hidden behind ginger hair. The shock and betrayal born in the soft brown eyes. The fury radiating palpably from the face of the eyeless one.

"Tord?" the voice was sweet, almost childlike to Tord's ears as the one with the brown eyes spoke. He thought he remembered his name. But it didn't matter just now. "Tord, what are you… How…?"

"Who cares?" cried the eyeless one, throwing himself forward only to be stopped by his two friends. He struggled and fought, like the struggle from within the Red Leader himself. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of being similar in any way, shape, or form to this young man he despised, though he wasn't sure exactly why. "Let me go! I'm gonna kill him!"

"No, no, stop it!" cried the browned eyed one.

"I don't think this guy has any pizza," noted the ginger. Tord did not flinch as the one in the blue hoodie struggled forward, blank eyes blazing with an invisible fury, a vicious swing coming within a foot of his face. He hesitated a moment longer. A strange sound was coming from him, like a laugh, but stranger far still than any laugh he had ever heard. An insane guffaw. And he raised his arm.

The first blast caught the fighter in the gut. The three were blown away by the blast that left a hole in the wall behind them. The scent of hot blood filled the air as it pooled around and soaked through the blue clad figure lying prone on the floor, face blank, but with the faintest ghost of surprise still left behind.

The second and third blasts silenced the screams of the other two, hitting each in the chest. And with each blast, Tord felt his control over the weapon that was his new arm strengthen. He was master. The rebellion, the struggle between man and machine, had been quelled at last.

Annihilated… At the expense of three lives.

It was terrible, like waking up from a dream, where you had but one final goal, one mindset, only to wake up and discover that you had been sleepwalking in the same direction trying to reach an impossible goal, which a million conflicting emotions and needs vying for your attention all at once. That was what it was like when his mind was at last cleared. Yes. A dream. Or a nightmare. He wasn't the friend of these corpses, was he?

Was he?

Was he once a member of their group? What were the names of the bodies covered in bloody and gaping wounds, who lie in the burning and destroyed apartment he was in? What were they like? Who…

It hit him so hard he gasped. They were dead now. And he had killed them in a battle between himself and his need for power, for control. Megalomania.

He didn't remember leaving. But he remembered the newspapers the next day, the breaking news on the televisions. "Three found dead in apartment complex. Red Leader seen fleeing the scene."

Three found dead.

Hindsight was perfect. Unflawed. Hindsight allowed the viewer to see the world as it was through the lense of time. And as he stood there, as the sun started to set in the breezy graveyard, he knew what he had to do. He knew it from the first time he had seen the grave stones marking the final resting places of his first three friends. Matt Hargreaves. Tom Ridgewell. Edd Gould.

He unpocketed a little device, no bigger than perhaps a deck of cards, and stared at it. The technology had been around for less than a year now. It had taken much cunning and violence for Tord and the Red Army to get even this small item from the government; a small item that broke the laws of science and allowed the user to change the way history was

Tord lifted the small object to his lips and closed his eyes, as though about to kiss it. He stood there for a long, long time before saying, at long last to the remote:

"Take me home…"

And with a flash, he was gone.

 **A/N I've decided to expand His World into a place for me to do my Eddsworld one shots while I attempt to figure out some sort of actual fanfiction to put on here :) WoO! This one was inspired by some flipnote I watched with "Goodbye to a World" as the song. Comment, follow, read my other fics, and always be awesome.**

 _*Epilogue*_

If a person watched as The Red Leader disappeared, you would notice something strange. Nothing happened at first. Then, slowly at first, then gaining speed, the scene changed. The withered brown grass grew suddenly green. The tree stump twenty feet away became suddenly a great oak tree. And the three gravestones? They disappeared. And, depending on what you thought or what you wish, a monument of white marble would become visible, just beyond the tree, flashing in and out of existence, unsure of whether it was or wasn't. Do you see it? Or not? The inscription is not what matters, nor is the familiar face of a certain devil-horned megalomaniac. What matters is what you learned.

 _And just who is the real enemy in your story?_


	3. Story 3: A Fight and A Friend

_*Chapter contains lil' demons, name calling, and a fight (read the name, dingus). Nothing crazy, though!*_

 ** _Story 3_**

" _A Fight and A Friend"_

The day was warmer than usual, though few complained. It offered an excellent chance to take off the jacket one wore and enjoy the teasing warmth of the sun as the breeze blew. School had only started a couple months ago, and it took about that long for the students to get into the groove of things. It was about the time it took for seventh years just starting secondary school to knuckle down and realize, at last, that the summer holidays really were over. It was about the time it took for them to form their cliques and begin their schoolyard rivalries, and to discover which of the elder students in the eighth and ninth years to avoid - tenth, eleventh, and twelfth seemed to ignore everyone other than themselves.

One of the more innocent groups of seventh years tended to congregate around an old ash tree by the cafetorium, and not often would you see three such different get together as well as they did. They had been best friends since halfway through their fifth year in primary school, and had stuck together through thick and thin. Right now, two of them were making their way to their base of operations, ready for the lunch hour, which was really only 45 minutes, but had retained its name from when the students' own parents had been children.

One of the boys was tall, with ginger hair hair and a generous splash of freckles across his nose. His sapphire blue eyes sparkled with charm, which made up for his lacking in high marks. The second boy was not quite as tall, but very thin, like a twig. His pale face was marred here and there by the odd pimple, and one could say he had intelligent eyes… If he _had_ any eyes. Instead, there were two voids where eyes should have been, but weren't. But seemed to be able to smile anyway, despite the braces on his teeth and the constant teasing and questioning of his peers.

The two boys reached the old ash in quick succession of one another, and quickly started up a friendly, if haphazard conversation. They talked of things like their football trading cards, marks, an old American television show one of them had discovered the other night, and silly things like that that 12 year old boys enjoyed.

They stopped when their third friend arrived.

Edd was pretty short for his age, and nowhere near as slender as his other friends thanks to an immense liking for Cola. One normally couldn't see his eyes behind the curtains of soft brown hair, but you could always tell Edd Gould was happy from the bright, braced smile. But Edd wasn't smiling today. Instead, tears were pouring down reddened cheeks from under the curtain of shaggy brown bangs, and his mouth was twisted in the grimae of one trying to stop crying.

"Tom, Matt, help me!" cried the boy when he reached the old ash tree, hugging his own chest in despair.

"What happened?" Tom and Matt questioned, stepping forward to console their friend. "Talk to us, what happened?"

"I got mugged!"

"Mugged?" Matt's expression became one of a person struggling to remember something.

"Somebody stole his stuff, you numpty."

"Oh!"

"Markus Preston stole my sketchbook. He stole it right out of my hands!" Edd broke down again, and Tom patted his friend awkwardly on the shoulder. "I _need_ that sketchbook, guys! I need it!"

"Don't worry, we'll get it back," Matt said weakly, though without much conviction. Markus was in their year, but he was as big as some of the tenth and eleventh year students. With broad shoulders and smelly pits, he could have easily crushed any one of them easily.

But Tom wasn't a coward. He'd been in (and lost) his fair share of fights, had to defend his honor because of his looks. And just because he usually lost didn't mean he didn't put up a good fight.

"Let's go right now." Edd looked up. A bit of his brown bangs had been brushed away to reveal a warm brown eye, red and puffy with tears and wide with shock. Tom's jaw was set, empty eyes narrowed with determination. Matt shuffled a little uncomfortably, then smiled.

"Great! Let's go!" The ginger boy grabbed both his friends by their hands and began pulling them away from their familiar ash tree, back in the direction Edd had come from. Matt didn't look it, but he was reasonably strong for his age, and a twig of a boy and a small artist didn't stand much chance against him. "I'll be sure to cheer while you get beat to a pulp."

One reason why Edd, Matt, and Tom enjoyed their old ash tree so much wasn't just the fact it had a picnic table in the shade, but because it was about as far as the three of them could get from Markus and his gang. They hadn't originally always been there, but that was before Markus decided that he liked the convenient spot by the cafeteria doors better than the bench by the oak. The three could smell Markus long before he could see them - he must have had physical education just before lunch.

"Markus!" shouted Tom as they approached, yanking his arm out of Matt's hand and stomping over to the huge twelve year old. He stood, and towered above Tom, who shrank back a little. "Er, give Edd back his, er, his sketchbook…"

"What's that twit?" chuckled Markus meanly. "I don't think I want to. Little punk needs to learn when being artistic is okay."

"It was an art project, Markus!" Edd cried. Markus laughed again.

"So?"

"I'll fight you for it!" Edd suddenly lept towards Markus, and was only stopped from getting a broken arm by Matt and Tom restraining him.

"No, I'm going to fight him, Edd, stop."

"I don't care!" The small boy twisted away from his friends and launched himself at the bully, punching him weakly in the chest. Markus looked momentarily stunned, then grinned wickedly and pushed him down with a yelp. He landed hard on the tarmac, fell over, and cracked his head on the ground. His vision momentarily blurred as he curled up into a little ball from the pain, clutching his skull.

"You-!" Tom was too angry for words, and ran at Markus himself. They engaged in a small tussle, Tom trying to avoid stepping on Edd, who lay curled beneath them.

"Hey!" A new voice had joined the fray. Matt turned around just in time to see a scrawny boy with blonde hair that stuck up like horns throw himself into the whirl of flailing fists and arms.

The fight, if it could even be called that, was over within a few seconds later. Markus was walking away, triumphant over the three much smaller boys on the ground, but there was a snarl written all over his haughty face and a red blemish on his face that would certainly grow into a bruise. He snatched Edd's sketchbook up from his table, then threw it on the ground at their feet.

"There, take your stupid doodle pad," he barked, then, turning to his friends, motioned for them to follow before walking away. "Go soak your heads."

The four boys left behind watched the retreating backs of the group of bullies before turning to themselves. Edd was scrambling to pick up his fallen sketchbook, hugging it tightly to his chest and grinning brightly at last. Tom and the blonde boy were getting to their feet as well. The blonde boy started to help pull Tom up, but the latter pulled his arm away none too kindly, scowling.

"Is everyone alright?" asked Edd, turning to his friends.

"Yes, I think so," said the boy. He had a heavy accent, Norwegian or Russian from the sounds of it. He turned to Tom and said, grinning apologetically, "I am sorry I hit you. I thought you were the bully."

"Yeah, well, you'd be wrong there, wouldn't you," Tom spat at him. There was a bruise forming under his eye, and he rubbed his arm with pain. "Where'd you learn who was who in a fight, huh? Communist finishing school?"

"Tom, that's not nice," said Matt, pouting and folding his arms in disapproval.

"I do not understand," answered the boy, brows knitting together and eyes widening. "I am Tord. I am an exchange student from Norway. I do not who what a 'communist' is."

"You don't need to know," said Edd before Tom could do more than open his mouth. Still clutching his sketchbook to his chest with one hand, he extended the other in a handshake. "You said your name was Tord, yes? I'm Edd. That's Matt, and this is Tom."

"Pleased to meet you," laughed Tord, taking Edd's hand and shaking it briefly.

"Wish I could say the same," Tom grumbled under his breath. Matt elbowed him in the ribs.

"How would you like to spend the rest of the lunch hour with us?" Edd asked genially, gesturing back in the direction of the old ash tree. A wide smile split Tord's face, and he nodded vigorously.

"Yes, that would be good." He fell into step with Edd, Matt and Tom, making their way back to the old ash, hands flying to the pockets of his overlarge red hoodie. It was just his luck to have met these new friends on a day like this.

 **A/N Guys. I think I had an idea for an acTUAL FAN FICTION FOR EDDSWORLD OHMAHGAWSH. Now I just need to figure out how to get a few idiots in a position to start a rebellion. Heehehehehee. *strggl* ANYWAY, I saw a few pictures of lil' Eddsworld kiddos, and I instantly fell in love with their designs, so I just had to make a story about it XD ALSO I'm as American as one gets. I have NO IDEA how British schools work... Or even what grade a 12 year old version of Edd, Matt, Tom, and Tord would be in (turns out an American sixth grader in middle school is the British equivalent of a seventh year in secondary school), so I actually did RESEARCH *dies* OH GOSH. It was awful. I actually had to use WIKIPEDIA AHH. Anyway, I hope you guys mildly enjoyed this chapter of one version of how I think Edd and gang all met Tord, lolz. Have fun, don't die, love yourself, check out my other works, COMMENT, and peace out my dudes!**

 **~File_13**


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